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Fireballs in Jupiter’s Atmosphere Observed by Amateur Astronomers
Saturday, September 14, 2013 7:27
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The solar system is crowded with small objects like asteroids and comets. Most have stable orbits which keep them out of harm’s way, but a small proportion of them are in orbits that risk them colliding with planets.
The smaller the objects, the more numerous they are, and the more frequent these collisions should occur. Collisions like the recent meteor seen over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013, are rare because the object was relatively large, around 17 meters across.
The giant planet Jupiter—a big target with tremendous gravitational attraction—gets hit far more often than the Earth, and these collisions are much faster, happen at a minimum speed of 60 kilometers per second.
The first of these collisions was observed by A. Wesley from Australia and C. Go from Philippines on June, 3 2010. The second object was observed by three Japanese amateur observers (M. Tachikawa, K. Aoki and M. Ichimaru) on August, 20 that year and a third collision was observed by G. Hall from USA on September, 10 2012 after a report of a visual observation from D. Petersen from USA. Credit: Hueso/Wesley/Go/Tachikawa/Aoki/Ichimaru/Petersen
Simulations of object entering Jupiter’s atmosphere. Credit: Jarrad Pond/South Florida University.
Amateur astronomers observing Jupiter with video cameras have been able to observe three of these collisions in the last 3 years and a detailed report of these collisions has been presented at the European Planetary Science Congress at UCL this week by Ricardo Hueso (University of the Basque Country, Spain).
Provided by European Planetary Science Congress
Physorg.com
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